BB i don't know if you would be up for this idea but can you convince the guys at SM to include your wonderfull vss with p8 it would be nice it were apart of it. However I understand if you don't want to do something like that with your baby.

Quote -

Now,,, this snapped my head up. Poserlight is gone.  I wonder how good the gallery will look  this fall..

poser has shadows for years now. yet more then 30% renders in the gallery are without shadows.

how will the gallery look? we will see. it will be funny if someone will open a thread and will ask what are shadows.   he he he he he

bagginsbill you didnt work on the GI right? do you think it is a smart GI that gets you good results with speed or is it just a  simple ''monte carlo'' GI that will take a lot of time to render for simple scenes.

how would this GI work with transmapped hair. would this take ''1 month'' ? or how does this GI work with reflections and transparent objects? 

in your opinion do you think that they just threw inside a GI or did they spend to make a god GI?

Quote - > Quote -

Now,,, this snapped my head up. Poserlight is gone.  I wonder how good the gallery will look  this fall..

poser has shadows for years now. yet more then 30% renders in the gallery are without shadows.

how will the gallery look? we will see. it will be funny if someone will open a thread and will ask what are shadows.   he he he he he

I'm really curious as what people will do with these new features. I think part of the reason many users have avoided shadows is because they can be tricky to control. You need extra fill lights or IBL, and then you need to decide where to put them and whether they should have shadows, too, etc. For complex scenes, that can be a royal pain in the rear.

With the new global illumination features, lighting a scene with shadows enabled will be much more straightforward, so people might actually start using them more.

Quote - This is with GI.

Notice how the hidden ball is now lit, instead of completely black. Notice that the sides of the little boxes are no longer black. Notice that the wood is color bleeding onto the white props.

this looks fantastic.

this is a very simple scene. this should be under 5 minutes to render. god help us if this was 20 minutes.

Quote - I'm really curious as what people will do with these new features. I think part of the reason many users have avoided shadows is because they can be tricky to control.

The reason a lot of people avoid shadows is because they have 50 people lining up to tell them how awesome their image looks  - some of them may have actually LOOKED at their image, but since they also have 50 people lined up telling them "amazing" "+5" they don't know any better either. That probably won't change.

i agree.
hard to control them? you position your light and your render with shadows. then you have only 3 more options.  blur,bias and shadow size.

You realize, people buy light presets.  Never understood that personally, but they do.  They buy light presets that have visibly cruddy shadow settings in the promo pics!

it should be illegal to sell light sets.

just joking  :) 

Quote - However, transmapped hair is still a bitch. - bb

I wonder if transmapped render times are insane with the new GI compared to, say, 1 rt light no ao...
My current favourite portrait light set is one ibl with ao, one spot rt mainlight and one infinite rt backlight - renders closeups (hence hair filling a lot of the 600x800) within 15 mins. (i7 920)

Quote - For some people, I suppose P8 is not worth the step up from P7. But P6 to P8 is a crazy big difference. - bb

I just hope there is a relatively cheaper upgrade from p7pro to p8.

Quote -

But my problem with Poser 8 I suspect will be the need for an intel based Mac to run it.

If it needs an Intel chip then I won't be buying it for my G5 PowerMac.
I wish they'd hurry up and tell us what they're up to!

Quote - i agree.
hard to control them? you position your light and your render with shadows. then you have only 3 more options.  blur,bias and shadow size.

And then you have an image full of big black blotches.

Quote - This is with GI.

Notice how the hidden ball is now lit, instead of completely black. Notice that the sides of the little boxes are no longer black. Notice that the wood is color bleeding onto the white props.

I like what i'm seeing  You sold me on the Poser 8 .  Yep i'll Buy it.

I always thought there should be a few standard default Poser scene setups that newcomers could load up and immediately get some kind of half decent render results. You can learn so much about the basics from a few simple examples like this, visiting the various rooms and parameter dialogues to study the settings. I got a good grounding in 3dsMax this way (plus it had a very good manual). This is assuming you have the desire and aptitude to learn in the first place. 

Poser, like most 3d apps, is a complicated environment for a complete newcomer - it might not seem so having used it for years, but it is. It's not just the UI or the basic principles of image making. It's also the nature of CG at this time that we have to deal with lots of workarounds - to get realistic lighhting, shadows and materials for any given scene you often have to do very counter-intuitive things. Even the big boys have to do this, as mentioned earlier by others. You usually find also that in most apps there will be features that don't quite work as well as you'd like them, so you have to refine the settings to deal with it - or not use those features at all. I actually quite enjoy that challenge, although I'll admit it gets frustrating at times if you have a creative idea that slowly gets buried in technical difficulties (I find hair a nightmare).

I think you have to be realistic about the galleries here too. Most of the posters are going to be hobbyists, perhaps not dedicating an awful lot of time to this particular recreational passtime compared to some others. That's fine, you just have to accept it. There are,in fact, many people doing very nice work of varying degrees (not just within the sphere of realism either), sometimes pushing Poser to the limits of what it can do. I think you have to see it not just in technical terms as well, but the creative ideas that people are dealing with. However you see it, I don't think it serves much of a purpose to get too frustrated by all those non-shadow images - focus on the other ones, and getting your own images in the galleries.

Some people just want a light switch so they can see to rearrange the furniture.

Some people like rewiring the house

A few even like transforming the power grid

Perfect world

Quote - bagginsbill you didnt work on the GI right? do you think it is a smart GI that gets you good results with speed or is it just a  simple ''monte carlo'' GI that will take a lot of time to render for simple scenes.

how would this GI work with transmapped hair. would this take ''1 month'' ? or how does this GI work with reflections and transparent objects? 

in your opinion do you think that they just threw inside a GI or did they spend to make a god GI?

I didn't work on the GI at all. I don't know too many details, but I'm certain it is not a naive Monte Carlo implementation. I don't know what the optimizations are, but I know there is something sophisticated in it. You can see watch it as it calculates the indirect lighting. It puts red dots in to show where it is calculating and where it isn't. It does a very good job of skipping hundreds of pixels in each bucket where extra rays are just not needed.

Reflections don't seem to upset render times much. But transparency in general, and transmapped hair in particular still slow things down a lot. How much, I don't know, as I have not had the patience to watch one. I will try an overnight render with hair tonight. I did a large version of the Alyson render last night. It was 1800x1400 pixels and finished in just under 4 hours. The good news is unlike the introduction of AO a couple years ago, it produced exactly what I expected with no artifacts, so I don't have to do it again. I can move on to the next image.

I have had only limited experience with other renderers so I can't really make any informed comparisons. I tried various GI algorithms with Kerkythea, but they were all very simple box-and-a-ball type renders. When I loaded a V4 with hair into Kerky, I did not get a nice image without GI, so I never tried with GI. Unfortunately, learning how to operate any other renderer correctly is time consuming for me, and I'm probably not going to get around to that.

Quote - BB i don't know if you would be up for this idea but can you convince the guys at SM to include your wonderfull vss with p8 it would be nice it were apart of it. However I understand if you don't want to do something like that with your baby.

That's not going to happen, for now. There are too many other new things to test and refine, without adding VSS into it. VSS as is does work fine in P8. However, I'll want to take advantage of the GUI capabilities in P8, so VSS for P8 will be getting a facelift.

Quote - Reflections don't seem to upset render times much. But transparency in general, and transmapped hair in particular still slow things down a lot.

This isn't terribly unusual for GI renderers.

Quote - > Quote - bagginsbill you didnt work on the GI right? do you think it is a smart GI that gets you good results with speed or is it just a  simple ''monte carlo'' GI that will take a lot of time to render for simple scenes.

how would this GI work with transmapped hair. would this take ''1 month'' ? or how does this GI work with reflections and transparent objects? 

in your opinion do you think that they just threw inside a GI or did they spend to make a god GI?

I didn't work on the GI at all. I don't know too many details, but I'm certain it is not a naive Monte Carlo implementation. I don't know what the optimizations are, but I know there is something sophisticated in it**. You can see watch it as it calculates the indirect lighting. It puts red dots in to show where it is calculating and where it isn't.** It does a very good job of skipping hundreds of pixels in each bucket where extra rays are just not needed.
.

red dots?
i think this is IR. irradiance catching. this is very good. this makes good results but faster.

Quote - I just hope there is a relatively cheaper upgrade from p7pro to p8.

Amen to that! Pro users should get a better upgrade price! Pass that on to the SM guys!

I'd think that if you bought Pro, then you'll want the next version of Pro, not Poser 8. Poser 8 is not strictly an upgrade from Poser Pro, since you'll gain some features and lose others. If there was an important reason you got Poser Pro instead of or in addition to Poser 7, then you'll find the same reason to recognize the distinction.

Well there wasn't really an important reason and I don't think I'll go Pro again.

Quote - I If there was an important reason you got Poser Pro instead of or in addition to Poser 7, then you'll find the same reason to recognize the distinction.

The 64bit Firefly render engine was the reason I've got PoserPro. Will Poser 8 be a 64 bit app or is it still 32bit but has the 64bit Firefly renderer? If it's only 32bit I am going to wait for the next Pro hoping that will be 64bit.

Since I can't afford upgrading my hardware to 64 bit in the foreseeable future, I hope that Poser 8 will include a 32 bit version for us poor folk. Whilst our economy here in Oz hasn't been hit quite as bad as yours in the States, many of us are battlers who have to make the choice between software and hardware upgrades. The kids gotta eat too, for some reason... and their shoes... sheesh, they go through *shoes so quickly!

I'm really not certain what P8 is in the 64-bit department, so I'll not try to answer that, lest I'm wrong.

thanks

Quote - I have no knowledge of the pricing, so I can't help there.

On page 5 you said:

"As much as I love Poser, $125 is the price of a toy and you get what you pay for. You want blazing fast high quality renders? Buy Maya at $4999.  Or even Vue at $895...."

Hopefully the Powers-That-Be agree...

I used that number only in response to a comment that somebody else made with that number, just to be clear. I have no idea if that number is in any way connected with reality.

Here ya go. One infinite light at 75%.
Skin is Diffuse_Color = WHITE, Diffuse_Value = .7, no specular at all.

Left is without GI, just the direct illumination. Right is with GI, which picks up the light emitted by the environment sphere, as well as bounced light from one skin part to another, such as where the arms are near the body, or under the chin which picks up light from the chest.
Render time was affected by his brow, which although 100% transparent, still counts as a transparency that has to be studied.

Render time on the left was 35 seconds, on the right 23 minutes.

Ready?

ZERO.

There are no lights. Just the environment sphere.

It would look better if the image I used was HDR, but for the type of scene I wanted there weren't any.

This is the gray-skinned Apollo. His color is from the environment.

Wow. I am not sure about your "not that you'd really want to do this". I do!

how long did the no lights render take?

Quote - > Quote - BB can you please render this out? apollo with your ENV_sphere for an outside render. so like  your render with the girl.

but can you use a bright grey material?  the reason for this is because i want to see how the colors look that bounce on him.

thanks

Here ya go. One infinite light at 75%.
Skin is Diffuse_Color = WHITE, Diffuse_Value = .7, no specular at all.

Left is without GI, just the direct illumination. Right is with GI, which picks up the light emitted by the environment sphere, as well as bounced light from one skin part to another, such as where the arms are near the body, or under the chin which picks up light from the chest.
Render time was affected by his brow, which although 100% transparent, still counts as a transparency that has to be studied.

Render time on the left was 35 seconds, on the right 23 minutes.

thank you very much for this example.

i must say this is maybe good for poser but for a software in 2009 this is IMO very bad. it shows that you didnt work on this. it really shows because no way would you do something like this.  because 23 minutes for a white figure without any textures is really bad. i mean we are talking here about a model with plain white shading.

again thanks for everything

some people are asking me why i are you in Poser if you want better lights,.... and so on.

look at my gallery. i have rendred iron man for christ sake. a free figure that is rigged for poser. should i know learn to use 3dsmax or maya and then start learning rigging and modeling? then maybe in 5 years i would come 70% close to this iron man figure. and then in 3 years i could maybe render this out.

fact is that poser is something special. you are able to buy a figure with clothes. you are able to use a figure that is already rigged for posing . or maybe even animation.
poser has potential and i see a future where known CGI artists are using Poser. now they need to use Zbrush for fast posing.

Quote - because 23 minutes for a white figure without any textures is really bad. i mean we are talking here about a model with plain white shading.

23 mins isn't that unusual for a GI render.  Remember the amount of calculations that the render engine needs to do to figure out what the hell the light is doing, even in render engines that are optmised for GI.  Firefly hasn't had a working GI before so cut it a bit of slack. 

The render time is more affected by the poly count than the textures actually (from my experience anyway but I'm not an expert)

If you want a blindingly fast GI render engine, get Blender and sign up to the VRay beta

Or use Blender with Yafaray - not as fast as VRay by a long shot but gives pretty good renders

www.yafaray.org/

if you do a little search on the Kerkythea forums you`ll find a beta POSERay that can transfer poser content to Kerkythea.....

@bantha:

Quote -  I assume you mean more then 3 gigs of memory. This is already possible with Poser Pro and Vista 64. Without an 64-bit OS there won't be more than 3 gigs of memory. 

I don't know if someone already answered that but it is also possible with Poser Pro and XP Prof 64 which I like much more than Vista because Vista needs much more RAM than XP Prof 64 that your app could use better otherwise.

@justdusty:

Quote - I am running PP and Windows 7 64 bit and it still only uses 3 gigs when rendering and I have 12 gigs and an I7 true quadcore, so if you have a secret please give it up!

I had this problem with Bryce6 on Windows XP Pro 64 but it worked after I used 'Large Adress Aware' (LaaTiDo.exe  -> http://www.musikbanken.se/TechLaaTiDo.aspx). Maybe this little and free program helps in Vista or Windows 7 too (it was released for Windows XP 32bit to trick the 3GB limit, but it works also with XP Prof 64!) ?

@Deecey:

Quote -
If your computer has a 64-Bit Operating System, Poser Pro will use its 64-Bit FireFly Render Engine to access as much memory as possible. To utilize the 64-Bit FireFly Render Engine, you must select Render in Background.

1. You don't have to select that because, if Poser Pro really needs lots of memory it simply closes after some time and the Render engine does it work by itself in the background as you can see in the Task Manager. I used the Render in Background only once, it's not really needed to select it. You can render as you want!

I have 6 GB RAM and PoserPro.exe , which uses only a small percentage of CPU (Core2Duo E 4600, 2400 Mhz) before rendering, closes when the Task Manager shows it's already over 5,5 GB, the FF64Render.exe  engine uses then 100 % of the CPU until it's finished. You nevertheless can open Poser Pro again and see in the Render window how far your render is finished and close PoserPro.exe in the Task  Manager while the FF64Render64.exe continues to work.

1. justdusty did not ask about rendering but about addressing the amount of his RAM memory. You need memory for setting up scenes with lots of characters even before you render.

@bagginsbill:

Quote - I think that's right, Deecey. I don't have 64-bit OS so I've never been able to try it with Pro.

No, it's not right. :-) But my thanks for your tutorials, I learned a lot that way.

You mentioned something about User Interface in other languages as Japanese, French and German. Do you know whether Poser 8 will be published in other languages as Poser 7 was?

I hope so, otherwise I did a lot of extra work for nothing. :)

I doubt that you can respond to this but I am thinking about a few things that I hope are still in Poser 8. They might be something to think about, or not. The little triangle auto expander in the libraries that allows you to go anywhere in a single click is wonderful and I hope it doesn't go away, the light ball is quite handy, the movable window and changeable/hidable palettes are all things that I really like in Poser. To me the current Poser interface (although it isn't perfect) is very clean and it nice to have the flexibility that it does have. The DS interface has always bothered me and it does a lot of things that I don't like and I am hoping that I still cna use Poser in most of the ways that I have through the years.

Quote - I had this problem with Bryce6 on Windows XP Pro 64 but it worked after I used 'Large Adress Aware' (LaaTiDo.exe  -> http://www.musikbanken.se/TechLaaTiDo.aspx). Maybe this little and free program helps in Vista or Windows 7 too (it was released for Windows XP 32bit to trick the 3GB limit, but it works also with XP Prof 64!) ?

Poser 7 and Poser Pro are compiled large address aware, so this tool won't change anything (at best). If they weren't, the Poser process couldn't even use 3GB, it would hit the 2GB barrier. See msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb147385%28VS.85%29.aspx for details.

baggisnbill could this be possible for poser 9? 
its called ''reflection occlusion '' and its used for  reflective objects for fast rendering.

www.illuminatelabs.com/support/...reflection-occlusion/occl.pdf

@bagginsbill:

Quote - I hope so, otherwise I did a lot of extra work for nothing. :)

That's great, thanks!

@uli_k:

Quote - Poser 7 and Poser Pro are compiled large address aware, so this tool won't change anything (at best). If they weren't, the Poser process couldn't even use 3GB, it would hit the 2GB barrier.

Oh, I forgot about that! Then I hope someone else finds a solution to justdusty's problem or Windows 7 64bit doesn't have this problem with Poser when Win7 is finally sold.

@justdusty:
Have you problems with other 32bit software to run in Windows 7 64bit using more than 3 GB RAM? Was this problem addressed in other forums?

Quote - I doubt that you can respond to this but I am thinking about a few things that I hope are still in Poser 8. They might be something to think about, or not. The little triangle auto expander in the libraries that allows you to go anywhere in a single click is wonderful and I hope it doesn't go away, the light ball is quite handy, the movable window and changeable/hidable palettes are all things that I really like in Poser. To me the current Poser interface (although it isn't perfect) is very clean and it nice to have the flexibility that it does have. The DS interface has always bothered me and it does a lot of things that I don't like and I am hoping that I still cna use Poser in most of the ways that I have through the years.

The little triangle is still there, and improved. You can still go straight to any folder that way, but you can also just click an item directly to use it without ever going there at all. However, you will find you need this less because the library works very differently now. You are no longer stuck with viewing only one folder at a time, so you can simultaneously display stuff from many different folders.

Everything you like is still there, but with a twist that better manages screen space.

What would be great would be some way to add metadata to all kinds of Poser files so that, for example, all clothes characters, any associated props and MAT poses associated with a particular outfit could be viewed together.

Scene file previews would also be a plus.

Quote - What would be great would be some way to add metadata to all kinds of Poser files so that, for example, all clothes characters, any associated props and MAT poses associated with a particular outfit could be viewed together.

Scene file previews would also be a plus.

You would have to re-write every Poser File in your library to update them with metadata! You have any idea how long that would take?!?

Quote - Everything you like is still there, but with a twist that better manages screen space.

Thanks

Quote - > Quote - What would be great would be some way to add metadata to all kinds of Poser files so that, for example, all clothes characters, any associated props and MAT poses associated with a particular outfit could be viewed together.

Scene file previews would also be a plus.

You would have to re-write every Poser File in your library to update them with metadata! You have any idea how long that would take?!?

BB said earlier, metadata didn't make this release because they didn't have time to get the UI portion in, but they are working on it.

You wouldn't "have to" re-write your poser file. old ones would still work and you could add the metadata to them as you go.

Quote - ...the library works very differently now.

This I would like to see.

Quote - You would have to re-write every Poser File in your library to update them with metadata! You have any idea how long that would take?!?

Well, I'm guessing a l-o-n-g time to index existing files, the question being, would it be worth the hit for the considerable convenience down the road?

The metadata needn't be written into each file, it could be stored externally and cross-referenced with a relative path to the actual file.